


a night to shiver under skies

by Arazsya



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Assumed Unrequited Love, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29012298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: Tjelvar takes first watch.
Relationships: Edward Keystone/Tjelvar Stornsnasson
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23
Collections: EdTjelvar Week 2021





	a night to shiver under skies

**Author's Note:**

> Written for EdTjelvar Week 2021 - Day 2, Moonlight
> 
> title from "The Road You Didn't Take" by Stornoway. for clarity's sake, Tjelvar's daemon is a goshawk, and Edward's is a hazel dormouse.

Edward knows he should be sleeping. That’s how this is supposed to work, after all – one person takes a watch, and the other rests so they’re ready for theirs. They share the night, and by morning they’re both still safe. Tjelvar and Huginn are sitting outside now, so it’s Edward and Juniper’s responsibility to just relax and let themselves drift off.

And yet. Edward lies curled, head placed so that the thin line of moonlight that falls through the open tent flap does so across his wide-eyed gaze, as he looks out.

He’s never seen a sky like it. Full of stars, stretching from horizon to horizon, like dandelion seeds caught on some great cosmic wind. At home, he’d been used to a flat kind of dark, even out in the fields. There had been a few distant pinprick stars, which he could map constellations from, though he could never remember their names or exactly which shapes he was supposed to find where. 

Here, there are too many for him to even make a guess at where to start. It would be a vast scene of delicate brushstrokes, an intricately-stitched tapestry, a mosaic in dust, rather than the simple drawings in the books that his tutors had shown him. Every person he’d ever met could pull something entirely different from those glittering greyscale depths, and still have whole swathes of sky left to interpret. 

All that, and he’s not even really looking at them.

He’s aware, of course. Is certain that he’ll spend the whole of his own watch gazing at them, with all the awe and wonder that they deserve, unobstructed by the arch of the tent. For now, even the slim crescent moon can’t hold his attention, not while the scant light of it falls down and across Tjelvar’s face.

Tjelvar looks like he belongs. The outlines of him are picked out in a delicate frost of silver, reflected starshine dappling in his eyes. But for the steady rise and fall of his breathing and the hawk at his shoulder, he might as well have been a statue, hewn from the night. It’s enough to make Edward feel as if he’s made of glass – a part of him wants to go, trace the line of Tjelvar’s jaw and see if his skin is star-cold to the touch, but the rest is sure that his clumsy footsteps through the scene would shatter the whole of it utterly.

“You’re staring,” Juniper whispers, and he can feel the brush of her whiskers against the underside of his chin. “What if he sees?”

Edward shushes her, eyes flickering anxiously back between Tjelvar and Huginn. Neither of them look in his direction, or even stir. Probably didn’t hear. He hopes. Wouldn’t be the first time. Juniper’s usually quiet enough.

“Or maybe you should tell him?” she suggests, but from the shake in it, she’s as confident in the outcome of that as he is. 

“Not today,” Edward murmurs, just as he does every time she raises the subject. “It’s all right. We’ve got time.” He imagines they do, at least – the world has felt so quiet, since the blue veins receded. And even if there was something happening, they’ve been away from it all, searching for whispers of the past in places he’d never thought he’d go.

Juniper pats briefly at his neck, and then turns tail back down into the space between his collar and his neck. She knows as well as he does that it’s never going to be the day, or the time. They both have, ever since he’d realised his own feelings.

It’s an odd place to be, sometimes. In love. As certain as they can be that it won’t be returned, because Tjelvar’s fantastic and Edward’s enough of an embarrassment to the Church that they scarcely ever even respond to the status updates he sends. It feels bad, occasionally. Like he’s lying, by not telling him. But Tjelvar doesn’t need the awkwardness, and besides, it’s usually not unpleasant. Soft warmth, like an early summer’s evening.

When it’s a place like this, a perfect night at the edge of his world, he could never choose to be anywhere else. 

**Author's Note:**

>  _in summary_  
>  Edward: the stars sure are beautiful tonight  
> Edward: you know what else is beautiful  
> Edward: Tjelvar.   
> Edward: I love him. but he wouldn't feel the same way and I'm never going to tell him.


End file.
